Software Development Kit, release 11b. As the name obviously implies, its used to develop software for the Dreamcast.

Note as well that the copyrights are still valid, but as well Sega Headquarters knows of its distribution through the web, p2p, and news feeds. So Sega dosn't really think of it as a real threat since Dev Units are scarce.

I think that only the last few releases of the Katana SDK had any support for the BBA, if I'm not mistaken. Not that it matters much.

Most homebrewers stay far away from Katana. Not that Sega is bound to go after people for using it, but it is still illegal to use without a license. That, and KOS supports pretty much anything that Katana did anyway. KOS also has the upside of being maintained actively, and having a bunch of libraries ported to it that are useful. Oh, and the large amount of code out there that uses KOS helps out in learning things too (and people to help out).

Disclaimer: I'm one of the maintainers of KOS (the main one doing anything at this point, for the most part), so this post may seem a bit biased. However, everything I've said should objectively check out if you actually look at the state of things.

How many Katana SDKs were there? I'm not sure anybody has actually used them to make any software, although I guess they've gotten released by those people who have sold their development Dreamcast units without wiping the hard drives first.

BlueCrab wrote:Most homebrewers stay far away from Katana. Not that Sega is bound to go after people for using it, but it is still illegal to use without a license. That, and KOS supports pretty much anything that Katana did anyway. KOS also has the upside of being maintained actively, and having a bunch of libraries ported to it that are useful. Oh, and the large amount of code out there that uses KOS helps out in learning things too (and people to help out).

Would it be illegal to use it if it were already preloaded on a purchased SDK (from, say, eBay or somewhere like that)?

BlueCrab wrote:Most homebrewers stay far away from Katana. Not that Sega is bound to go after people for using it, but it is still illegal to use without a license. That, and KOS supports pretty much anything that Katana did anyway. KOS also has the upside of being maintained actively, and having a bunch of libraries ported to it that are useful. Oh, and the large amount of code out there that uses KOS helps out in learning things too (and people to help out).

Would it be illegal to use it if it were already preloaded on a purchased SDK (from, say, eBay or somewhere like that)?

Unless you have personally negotiated a license with Sega to use the SDK, it is illegal to use by its license. Also, the SDK does not generally get loaded on the devkit itself anyway, as its essentially a bunch of tools for Windows anyway.

BlueCrab wrote:Most homebrewers stay far away from Katana. Not that Sega is bound to go after people for using it, but it is still illegal to use without a license. That, and KOS supports pretty much anything that Katana did anyway. KOS also has the upside of being maintained actively, and having a bunch of libraries ported to it that are useful. Oh, and the large amount of code out there that uses KOS helps out in learning things too (and people to help out).

Would it be illegal to use it if it were already preloaded on a purchased SDK (from, say, eBay or somewhere like that)?

Unless you have personally negotiated a license with Sega to use the SDK, it is illegal to use by its license. Also, the SDK does not generally get loaded on the devkit itself anyway, as its essentially a bunch of tools for Windows anyway.

So if you actually could develop legally, would royalties still apply? I always wondered about the HTK-0120 bios and what was up with it. (I don't know what it is with me and royalties.)

BlueCrab wrote:Most homebrewers stay far away from Katana. Not that Sega is bound to go after people for using it, but it is still illegal to use without a license. That, and KOS supports pretty much anything that Katana did anyway. KOS also has the upside of being maintained actively, and having a bunch of libraries ported to it that are useful. Oh, and the large amount of code out there that uses KOS helps out in learning things too (and people to help out).

Would it be illegal to use it if it were already preloaded on a purchased SDK (from, say, eBay or somewhere like that)?

Unless you have personally negotiated a license with Sega to use the SDK, it is illegal to use by its license. Also, the SDK does not generally get loaded on the devkit itself anyway, as its essentially a bunch of tools for Windows anyway.

So if you actually could develop legally, would royalties still apply? I always wondered about the HTK-0120 bios and what was up with it. (I don't know what it is with me and royalties.)

If you had a license, the royalties required and other such fees would be a part of the terms, in all likelihood. So yes, you probably would still need to pay some sort of royalties to Sega.

That said, I can tell you that Sega probably isn't giving out licenses for Katana anymore, and hasn't for a while now. So, there's no way to actually legally use it anymore.

Note, you can have a devkit (HKT-0120) without paying any license fees for the SDK -- having one doesn't imply that you have the other (you still can't use the SDK without a license, even if you have a devkit). Granted, there's not much you can do with it without the SDK.

That doesn't make it any less illegal. Most of the homebrew sites I've been a part of won't touch Katana/WinCE stuff with a 10ft pole. There's really no reason to use it, since as I've said KOS supports pretty much everything.

The point of the SDK isn't really for developing Dreamcast software anymore as much as for the stand-alone tools it contains for manipulating things like ADX and PVR files. None of the third-party tools are as capable as the original ones, sadly.